


Rhinegold

by Rosie_Rues



Category: Diana Wynne Jones - Chronicles of Chrestomanci
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2008, recipient:Becky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-13 17:49:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosie_Rues/pseuds/Rosie_Rues





	Rhinegold

"I do think you're lucky," Julia said enviously as she watched them dash around. "I never get to go offworld."

"I don't feel lucky," Marianne said from somewhere behind the sofa. "I'm terrified, and I can't find my good hat."

"Klartch?" Cat said suspiciously. Klartch had recently acquired a vendetta against anything decorated with feathers, from dusters to boas.

Klartch gave a heavy sigh, dropping his head over Julia's shoulder, and grumbling, "It's not fair. Want to go."

"Well, you know why you can't," Cat said, not without sympathy. He would have liked Klartch along too. "No griffins in Series Seven. Now, help us, please, because Chrestomanci's going to be furious if we're late because you've hidden Marianne's hat."

Klartch flopped down further, his crest drooping into his eyes as Julia fell off the chair under his weight, and let out a loud sigh. "Shan't!"

" _Klartch!_ " yelled everyone. With three enchanters, plus Julia, Roger, Joe and Janet, all glaring at him, he gave way.

"In the rose garden," he said, and crawled under the schoolroom table to sulk.

Now he knew that, it only took Cat a second to summon it. Marianne jammed it on her head and she, Cat and Tonino dashed out of the room. On the way downstairs, Marianne gasped, "What's he like, this Mr Tesdinic?"

"Don't know," Cat replied, dodging around Euphemia as she came along the landing with a pile of towels. "Sorry! Sorry!"

"Haven't you met him?"

"He hasn't been here since I arrived! Julia says he's nice!"

"He is," Tonino contributed, to Cat's surprise. Tonino, for some reason, was intensely shy of Marianne. "He's been to visit my mother a few times."

Then they were pounding down the main stairs. Chrestomanci was waiting beside the pentacle with the distinct air of somebody who was about to check his watch.

"I assume you are ready?" he asked, raising his eyebrow a little at Marianne's hat, which, Cat now saw, was adorned with a very large caterpillar. Cat hurriedly sent it back to the garden and then nodded, picking up his suitcase.

Travel between worlds always made Cat feel sick, so he staggered a little as he came out under an archway in a very busy station. There were people everywhere, all dressed in smart, brightly coloured clothes, and he could see platform after platform of oddly proportioned trains, all pluming smoke towards the arched ceiling.

"Oohhh," Marianne said beside him, grabbing at his arm for balance. "That's worse than _cars_!"

She looked as green as Cat felt, and he didn't quite have the strength to hold her up. He began to list towards the nearest wall.

Luckily, Tonino did not seem to suffer from travel sickness, because he grabbed them both by the arm and managed to tow them over to a nearby bench.

"My knees have gone all fluttery," Marianne said. "Oh, it's cold here."

"I think it must be winter," Tonino said, looking down at them both in a worried way. "You both look awful. Does Chrestomanci get ill like this?"

"No," Cat said bitterly. He'd been on a few missions to otherworlds already, and Chrestomanci had now started adjusting their plans to ensure Cat had half an hour to recover before they started. He strongly suspected that he was going to have to get used to saving people when he felt like being sick on their feet, however, given how often Chrestomanci was called away with no notice.

"Well, he wouldn't," somebody said briskly, and they all jumped and looked up to see a smartly dressed man smiling at them. He was tall and dark-haired, with a rather merry look around his eyes, and, as Marianne said later, you could tell at once that Julia was right and he really was nice. "Eric, Antonio and Marianne, I presume?"

"Yes," Cat said, because the other two had suddenly gone shy again. "Are you Mr Tesdinic?"

"That's right," he said. "I'm sorry to be late - there's a bit of a fuss at the palace at the moment and I got caught up. Let me see about ordering a cab. Wait here." Then, as he turned to go, he paused and said, "You do realise the earth magics here are different, don't you? You two will have to draw from the ambient power quite differently."

"Oh!" Marianne said, and twisted her magic round to a different angle. Cat copied her as soon as he'd worked out what she was doing. Immediately, he felt better, as he could suddenly feel all the hum and bustle of life around him again.

"Why didn't anyone tell us that?" he demanded, sitting up.

"Christopher probably didn't realise," Tesdinic said casually. "He never had much of an instinct for _dwimmer_. He's not one for the more slow and patient magics. You might as well come with me, if you're feeling better. I assume a horse-drawn cab would suit you two more?"

"Yes, please," Marianne said, and they all went trotting off after Tesdinic as he hurried through the crowds. He seemed to be one of those people, like their tutor Michael Saunders, who was incapable of moving at anything slower than a stride.

"I'd better warn you," he said, as they rushed under an sign that read, in a script like newspaper headings, _Ludwich Henrietta, for trains to Dubrov, Buda-Parich, and the Lower Rhine_. "Don't mention where you come from while you're here. There's a lot of bad feeling towards offworlders in the city these days."

Then they were trotting down a broad flight of steps out of the station. A sudden blast of snowy wind caught at Marianne's hat, scattering rose petals, Tonino started coughing, and Cat stopped dead and stared. Horses and carriages thronged along the road ahead, their drivers wrapped in thick, fur-collared coats. Beyond the road was the river, frozen and wide. He could see the Houses of Parliament on the other side, with St Paul's next to them. Arched bridges crossed the river, with steam trains huffing across.

The ice was full of skaters and stalls. He could see a couple of bonfires burning out towards the centre of the river. Shouts of laughter sounded even over the clatter of traffic.

"Frost fair," Tesdinic said. "We're a lot further inland, and the Little Rhine freezes more easily than the Thames. Come on, Eric, let's get you out of the cold."

Cat only had a few minutes to make friends with the cabbie's horse before Tesdinic bundled him in the cab with the others. There were folded blankets waiting on the padded seats and, as they got underway, Tesdinic showed them how to tuck the blankets around their legs for warmth.

Tonino grinned at Cat. "We don't have snow like this in Caprona. It's wonderful."

"We don't have snow like this much in England, either," Marianne said. Her cheeks and the tip of her nose had gone bright pink. "It's so pretty."

Cat, peering out the window, had to agree. Ludwich seemed to be made up of little narrow streets, and tiny squares with fountains and stone archways dripping with icicles. It was like the pictures you got on the front of chocolate boxes at Christmas.

"I'm afraid I don't have anything exciting planned for you," Tesdinic said. "I thought we'd have dinner out tonight. Tomorrow we can do a bit of sightseeing - the Abbey and the Tower Menagerie and skating at Zurich House. Then the theatre in the evening and I'll send you back to the castle in one piece the next morning."

"It sounds wonderful," Marianne said, and the boys nodded. This was just meant to be a chance for them to go offworld on their own, and Cat, at least, hadn't been anticipating entertainment on this scale. And, as a bonus, he'd finally found out how to move between worlds without being sick.

"Why are offworlders unpopular?" he asked.

Tesdinic sighed. "One of the founding legends of Ludwich states that the city owes its prosperity to a magical treasure trove hidden at the bottom of the Little Rhine. In the autumn, a group of treasure hunters from Series Twelve caused a huge uproar by trying to steal the rhinegold. They were kicked out of Series Seven pretty fast, but it caused a lot of bad feeling."

At last the carriage drew up outside a smart terrace house. They bundled out, sliding a little on the icy cobbles, and Tesdinic went to pay the driver. Cat looked around in interest. The houses were all plastered in smart pastel tones, and had shiny black railings in front of them.

A little way down the road, a man in a battered overcoat was leaning against the railings. Even from here, he seemed to give off a sense of grubbiness that seemed very out of place here. As the cab left, he started down the road towards them, calling, "Mr Grant. Hexcuse me, Mr Grant!"

Tesdinic swung round, looking annoyed. He hurried off to meet the man, talking to him quickly. Then, not looking any happier, he marched back to where Cat and the others were waiting.

"A work matter," he said tersely, unlocking the front door. The smart house turned out to be a set of flats, with a clanging lift to take them to the top floor. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to deal with it. It sounds like our treasure hunters are making another attempt, though goodness knows how they intend to get through the ice." The lift stopped and he unlocked the front door, ushering them inside. "Hopefully, I'll only be an hour or two." He hurriedly opened two doors. "Here. Guest rooms. The next door is the bathroom. I know Millie will have my head if I'm not back for dinner, but just in case, this is the phone number of a restaurant that delivers. Just ask them to add it to my account."

Then he was gone, leaving them blinking and dismayed.

"Do all enchanters rush about like mad all the time?" Marianne asked, taking her coat off.

"Not the old ones," Tonino said. "They have other people to rush around for them."

"Let's pick rooms," Cat suggested.

Both rooms were perfectly nice, if rather bland, so Cat and Tonino claimed the bigger one and then settled into a comfortable squabble over who would have which bed. Marianne disappeared for a while, but then came back looking refreshed and nagged them into cleaning their faces.

"But we've hardly been anywhere," Cat complained.

"You're both covered in soot from the station," she pointed out. "Janet would make you, Cat."

"Janet's my sister," Cat pointed out. "Almost."

"And I'd make Joe if he was here. Go on, while I try to work out how to make the kettle work."

The kettle, in the end, was mysterious enough, to need a careful application of magic to get it boiling, but cocoa looked and smelt the same in this world. They explored the rest of the flat, which didn't take long, and spent a while pressed against the window in the main room, which had a view right down the river. Even after it started to get dark, the skating continued, though it did seem to get rowdier by the hour. They watched several fights break out before Marianne said, sounding worried, "He's been gone for ages."

"Should we phone for food?" Tonino suggested. "How do we know what to order?"

The telephone was another mystery. None of them had ever been allowed to use one before. Luckily, their attempts to understand it also led to the discovery of a menu stuck to the table underneath it.

"I've never heard of any of these foods," Marianne said, wide-eyed.

"That one's Aztec, I think," Cat said. "And I think that was the cabbage thing we served at the dinner for the Hapsburg ambassador."

"What did it taste like?" Tonino asked.

"Sour milk," Cat said bitterly. He was hungry.

"We could pick three things and share them," Marianne suggested.

Tonino turned the menu over, looking doubtful. Then he grinned and pointed at the box entitled _Set menu for three._

That lifted their spirits enough that they managed to solve the mystery of the telephone (one had to turn the dial to reach certain numbers, rather than pressing the numbers themselves). The food, when it arrived, came in round foil dishes presented to them by a man with enormous handlebar moustaches.

They all liked the rice, and the curryish stuff that tasted like prawns and ginger but looked like beef, but Cat ended up putting all of the bright purple duck sauce on his dumplings because both Tonino and Marianne claimed it set the back of their throats on fire.

"I like that," Cat said happily, and gave them his cookies in repayment.

After they had cleaned up dinner, though, they all found themselves rather gloomy. There was still no sign of Tesdinic, and sitting in a stranger's flat with nothing to do is always dull, even if that flat happens to be in another world. None of them felt sleepy yet, and trying to guess where Tesdinic had gone just made them all feel lost and miserable.

Eventually, Tonino found a pack of cards on a bookshelf, and they played Snap and Beggar My Neighbour for a while.

Just after the third time Marianne won (Tonino didn't know the rules and Cat had spent his early childhood being bullied into always losing to his sister and still sometimes forgot to let himself win), there was a thunderous knocking on the door.

"Conrad!" someone boomed. "It's Mike! Open up!"

They looked at each other, and somehow none of them moved.

"I know you're home! Hurry up! The city's going crazy and we don't have time for you to dawdle."

Cat put his cards down and crept over to the door. Whoever was on the other side was a powerful wizard, though not quite a sorcerer. He was also quite sincerely alarmed. Nervously, he opened the door.

"About time!" the man outside boomed, looking over his head. Then he blinked and looked down at Cat. "Well, I'll be blowed. Who in tarnation are you?"

"Eric Chant," Cat said politely.

"Chant," the booming man said, his hairy eyebrows knitting. "Chant, hmm. Heard that before. Well, yes - any connexion to a certain Sir Christopher?"

"Er," Cat said, remembering Tesdinic's warning from earlier. "No."

He got a chuckle in answer. "No need to worried, young 'un. Mikhail Lorenz-Brown, King's Investigator, at your service. My card, not that it'll mean a thing to you. Now, where's that enchanter partner of mine? Spells aren't showing him anywhere."

"He went out," Cat said, looking back at the other two. Marianne was twisting a bit of hair around her finger thoughtfully, but she gave him a quick nod, which Tonino imitated. So, they were all prepared to trust this man. As carefully as he could, Cat described the man who had brought the message.

"Georgie Hart!" Lorenz-Brown boomed, thumping his fist against the wall. "Damnation! He was in league with them all along. Picked him up an hour ago. And now Conrad's vanished and we've got nixies bursting through the ice as far down as Margate. Righto, you kids stay here. I'll send word to Sir Christopher in the morning if Conrad's not back."

And he stomped off again before Cat could offer to help.

"Finding spell," Marianne said, as soon as he came back into the room. "A good strong one, I think. Are there any herbs in the cupboard?"

"Only some dried rosemary," Tonino said. "I don't think he's much of a cook."

"That might tell us where he's been," Cat said, "not where he is. Why not just try a standard one?"

"They'll have done that already," Tonino said. "Though probably not a Series Twelve finding spell."

"Try that, then," Cat said, and thought at the streets outside, _Where's Conrad Tesdinic?_

Marianne joined in with him, murmuring, "I hate enchanter's magic," and he got a brief sense of somewhere cool and dark. Then Tonino added his magic in and they all got the same clear image, of Tesdinic floating underwater somewhere, with an odd golden hue to the water.

Then it vanished with a snap.

"Has he drowned?" Tonino asked.

"No, he's alive," Cat said.

"We need to find some waterfolk," Marianne said. "But they'll all be under the ice."

"Except the nixies breaking through it," Tonino said gloomily. "Do you think we could get one of those to talk to us?"

"Or find a bit of river which isn't frozen," Marianne suggested.

"Oh," Cat said, a snippet of knowledge coming back to him. "Janet said once that in her London all the old tributaries are underground now. They wouldn't freeze, would they?"

"You mean they're in the drains?" Marianne asked, looking a little green again.

"Oh," Cat said, thinking about it. "Probably."

"We could look down a drain without having to get into it," Tonino pointed out. "We drove over lots of drain covers on the way."

Ten minutes later, they were standing over a drain cover just outside Tesdinic's building. Glancing around to check they weren't being watched, Cat made the metal grid over the drain go away. Then they all crouched down, peering into the dark, smelly depths.

"Is anyone down there?" Cat asked. "We wanted to talk to one of the waterfolk, if you please."

After a moment, there was a scuffling noise, and then something lifted its head above the parapet. Cat wasn't sure what he'd been expecting from a drain spirit, but it wasn't anything like this. The creature was a delicate silvery blue colour, with a line of spines down its back and long silver tendrils spilling around its face. It clung to the edge of the drain with webbed hands and looked at them in a way which conveyed that it found them very strange humans indeed.

"We're enchanters," Cat explained politely.

Ah, that would explain it. What could the creature do for these enchanters?

"We're looking for a friend of ours," Cat explained. "He was trying to stop somebody from stealing the rhinegold and seems to have got stuck."

The creature couldn't help them, to its dismay. If they wanted to know about the rhinegold, they would have to ask the rhinemaidens.

"Where do we find them?" Marianne asked.

The rhinemaidens lived in the Big Cold. The creature couldn't say where. It liked to stay in its Little Warm, where it was safe. It wished them luck. Then it slithered back down into its drain with a plop.

"The Big Cold?" Marianne said thoughtfully. "The river?"

"Must be, if the rhinemaidens live there," Cat said. "Come on."

But although the river had been clearly visible from above, it was much harder to find at ground level. By the time they got there, they were all shivering.

The river looked far less merry than it had earlier. The ice was broken, with chunks floating jagged end up. There was a faint mist rising off the exposed water, and in the distance, Cat could hear people screaming.

"We have to get closer to the water," he said, sliding one foot carefully onto the ice. His foot went skidding out from under him and he flailed for balance. The ice creaked dangerously beneath him.

The other two came to join him, and they slithered their way out onto the river, hanging onto each other for balance. At the edge of the ice, they stopped, their breath coming out in clouds. The mist was getting heavier. There was a moon high above somewhere, but this close to the water, it was so dark that Cat couldn't see his reflection. The cold was seeping up through the soles of their shoes.

Cat was just about to open his mouth and call when there was a clear, ominous crack behind them.

Then the bit of ice they were standing on tipped up, sending them sliding into the icy river.

Cat flung a bubble of air around them just in time and one of the others immediately strengthened it. Marianne gave a little squeaking noise, but then drew a breath and murmured, "Fire."

The bubble immediately got warmer and brighter. Cat could see a tiny web of flames running over the outside surface of it. By their light, he could see a little way into the black water around them as they tumbled deeper and deeper.

There were fish in here, silvery scaled. There were also myriads of riverfolk, who went skittering away from the heat of the bubble with indignant noises.

"Why aren't we floating?" Tonino said. In the eerie light, his hair looked blue, and his face was covered with strange shadows.

"Something's pulling us down," Marianne said from where she was sitting on the bottom of the bubble. "Can you hear the singing?"

Now she'd mentioned it, Cat could. The water echoed with a high, wordless singing, a long heartbroken throbbing which made his bones hurt in sympathy.

The bubble was moving sideways now, as well as down, as if the current was tugging it. More and more rushing creatures appeared around them.

Then they bumped against the bottom of the river, so abruptly that Cat stumbled and almost put his hand through the wall of the bubble. The singing got louder and louder, throbbing around them until they all had to cover their ears.

When the first rhinemaiden pressed her face close to the side of the bubble, Cat jumped. She had a woman's face, but a long eel body, all swirling and golden.

"Thief! Thief! Thief!" she screamed at him, showing pointed golden teeth. Her hair curled around her like weeds.

"We're not thieves," Cat tried, but there were two more of them now.

"Thief!" they all shrieked, swimming around the bubble in loops.

"We're looking-"

" _Thief!_ " The scream this time didn't end, and it hurt, piercing through his brain. He doubled over.

" _Shut up!_ " Marianne shouted suddenly. "Shut _up!_ "

To Cat's surprise, her shout broke through the screeching. She seemed startled herself. Then Tonino gave a satisfied little smile, and Cat realised that there had been all the force of two enchanters behind her words.

"We're not thieves," Marianne said, folding her arms and glaring at them. "We've come looking for our friend. He was trying to stop the thieves and he's got stuck down here. Do you know where he is?"

This forthright manner seemed to be the way to deal with the rhinemaidens, for they swirled into a knot, murmuring to each other. Then they twisted apart again, and behind them Cat could see Conrad Tesdinic floating in the water. He was bound in long gold ribbons, and seemed to be unconscious.

"That's him," Marianne said. "We'd like him back now."

"Thief," one of the maidens sighed. "Keep the thief."

"He's not a thief," Cat said. "He's the one trying to stop them from taking the rhinegold. He was trying to help."

That provoked another huddle.

"You have to be rude to them," Marianne whispered. "They're like my Gammer. If you were polite, she thought you were feeble and walked all over you."

"Can you get them to hurry up?" Tonino asked. He was looking strained. "I'm holding this together, but we're going to run out of air soon."

"We want him back now," Marianne said. "Hand him over and we'll leave you alone."

The rhinemaidens all smirked, showing their teeth.

"Pay the price," one of them sang, slinking closer to the bubble. "Or we'll keep you all."

"No, you won't," Cat said. "We're all enchanters. Holding four enchanters prisoner isn't worth the trouble. We could boil all the water in this river and blow your gold sky high."

"No," they sighed, twisting around the outsides of the bubble. Its sides squelched alarmingly as they passed.

"Cat!" Tonino said urgently.

"What payment are you thinking of?" Cat asked, as nonchalantly as he could. "Perhaps we could bargain."

"Treasure," they hissed in unison.

"You want gold?" Cat asked, surprised.

They burst into shrill, mocking laughter, and the bottom of the river lit up. As far as Cat could see, in both directions, there were heaps of gold in nuggets as big as his fist.

"So cold," one of the rhinemaidens sighed.

"So still."

"So dead."

"I think they want something living," Tonino said.

From the hungry glint in the rhinemaidens' eyes, Cat throught so too. He also suspected that if they couldn't have four enchanters, they would settle for one. From the looks on the others' faces, they had just had the same idea.

"What else can we give them that's alive?" he whispered frantically.

Marianne was already turning out her pockets. "Flowers!"

He delved into his own coat pockets at once, until they had a pile of leaves and twigs between them. Neither of them went anywhere without a handful of herbs these days.

"Bloodroot for growth," Marianne said, plucking it out. "Box-elder for abundance. Sycamore for strength, but none of them are pretty. They're going to want something which looks good."

"Rose petals," Cat said, picking out all the ones which had fallen off her hat earlier. "Can you do roses?"

"I think so," she said. Then her expression hardened. "Yes."

She poured the petals and twigs into her cupped palm. Cat put his own hand over hers, closing the plants in. Then he plunged their linked hands into the muddy riverbed, through the thin skin of the bubble.

It was icy, and for a moment he forgot what he was trying to do. Then he remembered, and thought fiercely, _Grow! Grow roses!_

"Grow, grow, grow," Marianne was whispering beside them. "Tonino, help!"

And then, with Tonino's magic tangling in with theirs, something happened. Cat saw the golden piles begin to stir. Then thorny stalks pushing up through them, wet and glistening. As magic poured out of Cat, little gold buds formed on those thorny stems, growing and opening into shining metal roses.

The rhinemaidens cried out with delight, and went darting away among the flowers. Conrad Tesdinic, lying a few feet away, stirred and then opened his eyes. Almost immediately he started swimming towards them, his face alarmed.

"Cat!" Tonino shouted. "Cat, you have to stop!"

But Cat couldn't. The magic was still working, drawing on the magic that sat at the bottom of this river. He couldn't let go of it.

"Cat! We don't have enough air!"

The magic was still pulling out of Cat, faster and faster. It was beginning to scare him, but he couldn't stop.

Then the bubble burst.

The sudden slap of cold made him open his palm, and then he realised that he couldn't breathe. Panic did the rest and he kicked out wildly.

Someone grabbed him hard around the waist and then they were soaring up through the water, bubbles rushing past his eyes.

They burst out of the water so fast Cat was sure that they actually left it altogether. Then they were splashing back down, all four of them screaming.

"Hold on," Tesdinic gasped, still hanging on to all of them. "There's a boat coming."

And sure enough there was the slap of oars, and a gruff voice called, "Here we are, sir. Up you come."

As soon as Cat was pulled into the boat, someone bundled him into layers of blankets and started pouring hot tea down his throat.

"Saw you coming out of the water there," the boatman was saying. "We've been pulling folk out the water all night - come off the ice, did you?"

"Something like that," Tesdinic said.

"Get you back to shore and the doctors will see to you. You seem to be lucky there. Plenty in a worse state than the group of you. All this cracking and sinking seems to have stopped now, though."

"I rather suspected it had," Tesdinic murmured.

Cat, squashed between the other two in the end of the boat, decided that he had heard all he needed to know and let himself drift off.

#

Not long afterwards, they were all handed over to waiting nurses, and tucked up in bed to warm up. Cat, who was awake again, stared along the riverside department store had been converted into a ward for everyone fished out of the river, and sighed. He didn't feel like he'd done particularly well on his first independent trip offworld.

"Cheer up, Eric," Tesdinic said. "You did well."

"I almost drowned us all," Cat said gloomily.

"You also made sure that no one will ever be able to steal the rhinegold again."

"I did?" Cat asked, surprised.

Tesdinic grinned at him. "You gave it _roots._ "

"Oh," Cat said. He hadn't realised that was why the roses were made of metal.

Then a nurse appeared at the door, coughing politely. "Mr Tesdinic, a visitor."

Chrestomanci strolled in behind her, remarking, "There you are at last, Conrad. We picked up your thieves on the way back into Twelve A." Then he paused and gave Cat his foggiest, most bewildered look, as if he had forgotten his very name, let alone why he was on this world.

"Er," Cat said. "There was a thing. With rhinemaidens."

"Somehow I am entirely unsurprised," Chrestomanci said vaguely. "I shall be most displeased if any of you return home with pneumonia."

"We won't," Cat assured him. "Oh, it's the _dwimmer_ that makes me travel sick."

He got another vague stare, and Chrestomanci said, "I am glad your brush with hypothermia was not entirely useless. Conrad, a moment of your time, if you please."

  
   


  



End file.
